Institutional Innovation: Re-invigorating the University through Transdisciplinary Engagement

  • Gale Moore University of Toronto
Keywords: Transdisciplinarity, Universities, Innovation, Institutional innovation, ICTs and Society, Internet, Disciplines, Interdisciplinarity

Abstract

The view that ICTs-and-Society is a transdiscipline offers great potential as a way forward. As the community moves toward a shared understanding of what constitutes transdisciplinary engagement a series of new questions are raised. This paper reflects on one of them – the question of how transdisciplinarity can be accomplished in the university. The argument advanced is that by re-framing the challenges of accommodating transdisciplinarity as an opportunity for institutional innovation there is potential to increase the support for research on ICTs-and-Society in the university, and to provide university administrators with a way to demonstrate leadership by adopting a broader innovation agenda that could re-invigorate the university and strengthen its relationship with the broader community in which it is situated.

Author Biography

Gale Moore, University of Toronto

Gale Moore is a member of the graduate faculty, Dept. of Sociology, University of Toronto; Senior Fellow and former director of the University of Toronto’s Knowledge Media Design Institute, and adjunct faculty in OCAD University’s graduate program in Strategic Foresight & Innovation. Her primary interests for the past 20 years have been the social impacts of ICTs in everyday life, and on bringing an understanding of peoples’ experience and interaction with technology into the design of technical artifacts. She has a longstanding interest in institutional innovation and the ways various forms of interdisciplinarity enhance creativity and foster innovation.

Gale Moore

 

Published
2011-11-06
Section
Special Issue: ICTs and Society - A New Transdiscipline?